PlayStation 2: From A to Z – The Letters “E and F”

The From A to Z series lets our editors go back and take a look at games from past generations that are classics, overlooked gems, or just titles they remember fondly. The idea behind this is to pick five games from each letter of the alphabet, once a week to showcase. This delivers 26 weeks and 130 games to talk about. Hopefully it sparks some conversation, and of course plenty of memories.

Our second series will focus on Sony’s sophomore entry into the console business, the PlayStation 2.

Let’s continue with the letters “E and F”.

Evergrace

Truth be told, when I was looking for games starting with “E” to put on this list, the only one of the two that jumped out at me was Evergrace. This game is not particularly good. It’s not bad either. The real reason I ever played it was based on the cover art for the game case. One thing I didn’t realize was this was developed by Souls series creator, From Software. So it has that going for it at least.

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel

Yes, the black sheep of the Fallout family, Brotherhood of Steel feels more like a Diablo knock off than a more strategy type RPG like the classic games were. It had been a while since I played the original Fallout and since I didn’t have a PC that could play anything other than Solitaire at the time, this was what I chose. While not the greatest Fallout game in the world, I still remember playing a lot of it.

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly

By far the scariest game in the franchise for me, Crimson Butterfly had some of the creepiest ghosts and insane mechanics I have seen in a game. The false sense of security and jump scares were some of the best seen and to fight off the ghosts, you had to look at them in first person with a camera. I even have a few clips of me and my friends screaming while playing. Warning: it is very loud.

Final Fantasy X

Of course, I had to put a Final Fantasy game on the list, but for good reason. FFX did some things we had never seen before in an FF game. A more cinematic feel, great looking graphics, voice acting (even when the laughing was bad) and a new battle system that let you switch out party members while in combat. It was the next evolution to the franchise and a pretty good one at that.

FlatOut 2

Giving Burnout a run for its money, FlatOut 2 was an improvement on the first game and one hell of a racing game, but above the racing, the crashing was what really made the game fun and entertaining. Mix that with some highly destructible environments and some pretty great looking detail on wrecked cars, and this is one racing game a PS2 owner should have.